The floor inside here was heavily padded with countless layers of rug: wool, acrylic, phony Persian piled one on top of the other in lumpy strata of color and texture. Walls and ceiling were hung with rippling sheets of satiny blue material. Not a glint of metal anywhere. She might have been trapped inside a giant balloon or reclining within a royal tent pitched at the distant edge of some important desert struggle. Mignon lay almost invisible in a heap of gray swaddling that nearly matched his skin tone, a sick inverted turtle without the energy or desire to right himself, his scent an inescapable perfume, persistent, cloying, hard to place.
The surrounding shine and flutter of deep, decidedly un-skylike blue was both claustrophobic and oddly pleasant. Gwen liked The Object, this domestication of high tech. Is this what a sister felt like? “But where are the controls?” she asked.
Trinity pulled back a curtain, revealing an empty computer console, an unreliable-looking arrangement of tarnished panels, uneven rows of mismatched switches and dials, some of them remarkably similar to oven knobs; clumps of red and yellow and green insulated wire dangled out below like spilled spaghetti left to dry and harden. Between the panels was bolted a small metal wheel of a type ordinarily found steering a child’s toy car. The entire assembly offered up the spectacle of a trendy artistic construction abandoned in midflourish by both inspiration and will. Behold! the gateway to the stars.
“Don’t make a face,” said Trinity. “Just window dressing. For those who need that sort of aid. We are the power, Maryse and I. When it’s time, we lie on our backs, lift up our legs, and press the soles of our feet together. It’s bumpy at first, but yes, it flies.”
“We have to be naked,” Maryse added, smiling down at the baby who never smiled back.
“Yes,” Trinity agreed. “Starkers.”
“No one wears clothes in outer space.”
“She knows that, she was there.”
“I? Well, yes…but I didn’t see—” She felt herself begin to blush and was embarrassed further by the emblems of embarrassment. Trinity, who was now engaged in the absorbing task of painting her fingernails, paused, applicator poised quizzically, and looked at her.
“Any people,” Gwen concluded.
“You must have been on a special flight.” As she finished a nail, she leaned over, blowing on the polish as if cooling a spoonful of soup. The paint was drying to a dull even black.
“Off peak,” Maryse suggested.
“There was a whole lot of light. I couldn’t see very well.”
“When we went, there was just this nice white glow. Sort of creamy. And it was everywhere. They don’t believe in shadows. They say shadows are defects in our primitive perception.”
“Their organs are astonishing,” Maryse declared.
“Yes, and ever since I first laid eyes on those Etherians I’ve wanted a tail.”
“And what would you do with a tail?”
“I don’t know. Hang from rafters. Brush away flies.”
“The whole idea’s disgusting. Why don’t you just get a pet monkey instead?”
“What—like yours?”
Maryse reached over to stroke Mignon’s head. His prematurely wrinkled brow was bathed in a queer perspiration slick and heavy as glycerin. When his mother touched him he let out a squeak of ill-fitting parts rubbing briefly together.
“You shouldn’t make fun,” said Gwen. “He’s a beautiful baby.” From that old Zen book she couldn’t remember the title to or the author of: the adept who would something something practices sincerity and something something at every opportunity.
Maryse picked up the child and settled it in its rags on her lap, gazing down tenderly, wondering if the others noticed any resemblance to the Madonna.
“The grandparents must be proud,” said Gwen.
Maryse looked at her blankly. “What grandparents?”
Gwen could feel the rush of blood into her cheeks, the heat spreading. “But aren’t Dot and Dash—?”
Trinity laughed. “Oh, yeah,” she said, “the grandparents are quite proud, especially the grand father.”
“We’re not sisters,” offered Maryse in explanation.
“I’m sorry, but I just thought…”
“We’re blood sisters,” said Trinity firmly. “To the death.”
“But he looks so much like the rest of you.”
“He is one of us.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Dash is the father,” said Trinity.
“He is?”
“Yeah,” said Maryse. “We think it happened one night when he mistook me for Trinity in the dark. I don’t really remember too well. That whole day’s kind of blurry.”
“But—” And then she couldn’t seem to find the proper levers for verbal generation. Lights were dimming in important centers everywhere.
“We didn’t want to tell you before.”
“We thought you’d probably freak.”
For an instant she saw them both, bared on their backs, feet elevated and connecting, sole to sole, twenty toes spitting blue current, the cushioned floor in a tremble, about to tilt, and crouching there in a shower of hot sparks beneath a triangle of bone and illumined flesh was a young woman with yellow eyes who looked like her, stroking the erect fur of the cat, voided expression opening around the kind of mirthless grin that just might contain real fangs.
“The soup is real soupy, Mom.”
“He threw noodles at me first.”
“You’ve never liked any of my friends.”
“Jelly doughnuts for dinner?”
“This surprise loaf looks surprisingly like cat food.”
“I’m old enough to do what I want.”
“My, what a big sausage.”
“Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring.”
“Don’t threaten me, young lady.”
“If we’re so poor, why do we keep on having these ridiculously gross meals?”
“Can I have ten bucks?”
“Apple pan brown dowdy cobbler, a traditional recipe.”
“Sauerkraut’s like eating skin.”
“And don’t ever come drunk to this table again.”
“What is that smell?”
“Out of ketchup? We’re OUT OF KETCHUP!”
Gwen scrubbed her face over and over with a dwindling bar of lavender soap—the cleanest face in the family, Dot said—she used the word “family.” She looked at herself in the mirror. That is me, she said. She watched her hands dry themselves on a musty towel. Dash had been right, the Zero Time was drawing near. She flushed the toilet and composed her shining features. Her kit was packed.
Zoe was already in her chair, sticky fist brandishing a spoon bright as a crucifix against the last blinding rays of the lowering sun, knots of light twisting in dizzy spectacle around the walls.
“Hi, Zoe, whatcha doing?”
The spoon flew glittering across the room and out an open window. Gwen laughed. “Good shot.”
Dash shuffled in from the kitchen. Sometimes he walked like an old man, age draped suddenly over his body heavy as a winter coat. “What’s so funny?”
Her pleasure dissolved. “Zoe,” she said. “She just tossed her spoon out the window.”
He stood there, looking evenly at her, hands stuffed in his back pockets. “I’m sure she had a good reason.”
Gwen shrugged.
The Object shuddered, creaked, shuddered again, and Maryse appeared, clutching a brown bottle of vitamin B complex. “Great news,” she announced. “Mignon crawled today.”
Dash stared at her, expressionless. “Well, call the neighbors.” He glanced impatiently around the room. “Where the hell is everybody? I’m ready to eat.” He shuffled back into the kitchen.
“One of these days,” whispered Maryse, “we’re going to poison his food. Don’t be surprised.”
“We eat at six,” they heard Dash shout to his wife, “no exceptions.”
Gwen looked at the television. The set
was on, so Edsel couldn’t be far. She realized that not only did she recognize all the characters on this dumb show, she could accurately identify them by name.
The screen door opened and Trinity and Dallas rushed in breathless from one of their frequent tussles on the back lawn. Trinity’s latest ambition: to be a TV wrestling star.
“He showed me a British commando hold,” she declared. “I can put any one of you out in three seconds or less.”
“Do it on Gwen,” urged Dallas.
Dot, pausing to scowl deliberately at each in turn, carried in a platter of meatballs, followed by Dash, rattling the ice cubes in his vodka glass.
“Where’s Edsel?” he asked.
“He was here a minute ago,” said Trinity.
“Fine. He gets no dinner.”
Dash stepped to the head of the table, and everyone hastily assumed their places. He intoned the blessing: O merciful Occupants, Horn of Plenty, aluminum 19, Cygnus X-1. Gwen no longer paid much attention to these recitals, he sounded like he was barking out optionals in a celestial football game. Her eye wandered over the yard litter adorning the center of the table—the usual miscellaneous pile of brittle leaves, pocked stones, stems of grass, wilted weeds, a dried thistle pod, the cartridge from a ballpoint pen, shards of blue glass, a corroded D battery, one half-inch screw, a light bulb filament, a glazed strip of perforated metal, some rusty Nehi caps, the rubber seal off a mason jar, four cents’ worth of tarnished pennies, a piece of a robin’s egg, and poking out from under a torn sheet of waterstained notebook paper on which Edsel had drawn in purple and green crayon the descent of the mother ship, an odd cluster of stubby little sticks all gnarled and gray and around one peeling worm-riddled twig a thick ring crusted in black where linear forms seemed to be struggling into letters and, fascinated, she edged forward, Dash droning on about thermium and cosmic string, and thought she could decipher a V or a Y and a G and an H, curious consonants scratched in the dirt, what could they possibly—and oh no, VALLEY, and oh no, HIGH, and oh no, it wasn’t a twig, and her head jerked back, and she was on her feet, frenzied eyes seeing nothing, mouth in silent stutter, the others staring politely, waiting for her to speak, but what she wanted to say was outside and she was through the door and down the road before she even heard the sound that had been lurking here all along, braided among the laughing corn, woven into the smiling sky, the sound she fled toward with fluttering arms as if what lay before her were only a facsimile, temporary, paper thin, she could bust through into respite from the voice of the landscape itself, the total sound of a permanent shriek.
Ten
EEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Zoe was screaming and no one could stop her. Wedged in back between Trinity and Maryse, she tossed her head, the greasy ropes of her dark mane, snapping with crooked teeth at all the arms that wouldn’t let go. “Watch the nails!” warned Trinity. “They’re sharp as claws!” Short scrawny legs bruise-ripened yellow and brown shot savagely upward and a pair of Mickey Mouse Keds slammed flat into the back of the front seat. The VW swerved wide, lurching out of control into the oncoming lane, horn blaring, brakes in pain.
“Jesus God!” Dash yanked on the wheel, a quick glance up into the rearview mirror. “I’m trying to drive the goddamn car here.”
Trinity stuck out her tongue at the back of his head. “We’ve only got two hands each, Daaaaad”—her voice braying in mockery—“case you haven’t noticed.”
“Why don’t you just get off their backs?” Dot shouted. “We’re all doing the best we possibly can.” With the ball of her thumb she pressed a soft pink plug deep into the canal of one ear.
Dash turned to study for a moment the puzzling shape of his wife’s profile. “You wanna drive?”
She ignored him. Hair tied up in a gaudy paisley scarf that coincidentally duplicated in its pattern the very form of those mysterious amoeba patrolling in invisible splendor the oceans of Earth’s sky, Dot stared through her own matching Ray-Bans at the county road sliding on beneath them, a black arrow aimed at the low clouds squatting like dusty chickens in the far haze. Through the muffled booming of her blood she was dimly aware of the noise her daughter made.
EEEEEEEEEEEEE
“Use the knuckle grip,” suggested Trinity. “She hates that.”
“Shit!” Maryse shouted. “Look what she did to my cheek.”
Dash leaned forward as if to urge the wheezing vehicle on, though the accelerator pedal was already hard upon the floor, his mutterings lost in the general confusion and complaint of The Unit. “Why a carful of grown people cannot manage one little girl…”
“Quit yelling!” yelled Edsel, hands clamped in desperation to his head. “Everyone just quit yelling!” He was on his knees in a corner of the backseat, blinking through tears no one should see at the creepy demon face of his brother leering down at him from the elevated wheel of Donnie’s pickup truck and off in the clear country distance beyond, curds of black smoke roiling high against the flat September sky, talons of fire even now reaching up for the glittering prize atop the steeple, the silver dish revolving on as it fell, scanning still for signs of intelligence all the way down into the roaring ruins.
“Ow!” Maryse screamed. “Let go my ear!”
Trinity expertly seized a pinch of Zoe’s exposed thigh and squeezed and did not stop until long after Zoe had let go. Her shrieks were horrible, but Trinity smiled.
Dash raised his voice. “You know what will happen if I have to stop this car.”
Dot fished around in her purse for the brown bottle. “Here,” she said, “give her two of these.”
“No dope!” Angrily Dash batted the vial away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You know that’s just exactly what they want.”
“Who?” Dot’s expressionless face set severely forward to withstand the scourings of the meanest wind. “Who’s this they?”
Dash gaped at his wife in rare astonishment.
“Is there blood?” asked Maryse. “I feel something wet.”
Edsel turned around for a moment, wiping furtively at the corners of his eyes. “Are The Occupants after us?” he questioned his mother, shouting.
“No, dear, no one’s after us.”
“What was Dallas putting in the ground?”
“A UFO pilot,” answered Trinity, the bones of Zoe’s arm thin and brittle as dry sticks under her aching grip. “So the Air Force won’t find it.”
Baby Mignon, all but forgotten on a pallet of rags stuffed into the luggage well behind the backseat, bleated on unheard in futile protest at the harsh pillow of sun smothering his face.
“My leg’s going to sleep,” Maryse complained.
“Like how long are we expected to hold her like this?” asked Trinity.
Dot looked at her husband. “Moon-stoned,” she said. “Utterly.”
EEEEEEEEEEEEE
“Let’s throw her out,” Maryse suggested.
Dash’s hand kept checking the position of the gearshift. “Hell will be a resort after this,” he observed.
No one disagreed.
From his balcony seat in the cab of the truck Dallas watched the dumb masquerade unfolding up ahead with a connoisseur’s delight, a comedy of flailing limbs and distorted mouths performed to the headphone-delivered accompaniment of electronic surf, garbage-can-lid cymbals, synthesized thunder, cranial drills, sonic booms, steam compressors, and a grim doomsday voice chanting in Teutonic accents, “The rusted arm, the page of night, the Palace Guard spills into the street, burn it up, go too fast, what you know is in your eye,” Vic and the Vectors: the sound, the truth, the life.
Suddenly Zoe got loose and wrapped an arm around her father’s neck. “Fucking Christ!” The car seemed to leap out from under them, fishtailing all over the road, a moment of pure panic, skidding off onto the shoulder in a ricochet of pebbles and exploding dust, Dash’s sunglasses humorously askew, salt of blood flavoring his mouth, Trinity cuffing Zoe’s head, Edsel crying, Maryse cuddling dazed Mignon, Dot rubb
ing her nose, everyone shouting too loudly to notice the flash and whine of the cruiser coasting to a stop behind them, the tap on the glass—“Oh no, no problem, Officer, just the girl here, minor temper tantrum”—the cop bending down, examining license and registration, their startled faces, the sanctioned gaze of official eyes, Dot leaning over: “We’re on vacation, sir.”
From behind Dallas watched, slipping the revolver from glove compartment to at the ready between his thighs, the one who would do what had to be done. The roar of a cement mixer rattled his head, chunks of lyric tumbling around inside.
“Where the hell did he come from?” asked Dash of no one in particular after the cop had left them with a hard stare and a warning.
They fed Zoe the medicine, twice the usual dose.
“Are we going to jail?” inquired Edsel.
“Only you,” Trinity answered. “For bed wetting without a permit.”
“The numbers on his badge added up to 11,” noted Maryse. “Ditto sign.”
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